The purpose of this project is to show how much food waste increased from 1960 to 2018, collected by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This project will show a gradual increase in this timeframe making it easier to understand for everyone without needing to explain the numbers in details. For 2018 alone, there were 63,132,123 tons of food waste managed. (Food: Material-Specific Data 2020) We want to break down sources of where these food waste end up. The secondary purpose of the project is to show how much of them is composted vs how much of them is landfilled, and why this is happening
Ever since the 1960s, US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has ben collecting data on how much waste was generated every decade or so. The types of wastes varies, such as plastic, metal, wood, electronic, food, and etc. For the food waste, EPA collected how much food waste was generated and where did all of them evetually end up. EPA collected this dataset by various methods for each sectors; Residential wasted food generation is estimated by establishing a nationwide per capita estimate that is based on curbside sampling studies from across the United States and then applied to the U.S. population. The commercial and institutional wasted food generation estimates are based on dozens of industry-specific studies from across the nation. This was done by capture flows of excess food and food waste throughout the food system, and to provide more granular annual estimates of generation and management of excess food and food waste to the public (Food: Material-Specific Data 2020).
Using the derived data from EPA’s dataset, this data dashboard aims to inform the readers on the increase of food waste over the period between 1960 to 2018. This will be done by presenting the food waste generated for each decade and how much of them has gone to landfill or combusted. After reading this dataset, readers should be more aware of the increase in food waste and what they can do to prevent further increase.
FoodData <- read_excel("Food Waste types.xlsx",) %>%
pivot_longer(cols = !Materials, names_to = "Year", values_to = "Tons")g <- ggplot(FoodData, mapping = aes(x = as.numeric(Year), y = as.numeric(Tons), color = Materials, label = Year, label2 = Tons)) +
geom_point() +
scale_y_continuous(name = "Tons", label = scales::label_number_si()) +
xlab("Year") +
theme_get()
ggplotly(g, tooltip = c("label", "label2"))The data was originally recorded in 10-year increments until the year 2010, after that the food waste data was recorded every year. The graph still shows a general increase in the total amount of food waste every recorded year, but the largest increases happened after the year 1980.After that they started recording the increase in food waste combusted pushed the total food waste generated above the food waste landfilled. The food waste landfilled has a steep slope compared to the slope of food waste combusted as well. It seems like using a landfill for food waste is still the most common and easiest way to dispose of food waste. Near the later dates while total food waste did increase more food waste was combusted leading to less waste being landfilled then something happened in 2018 that lead to an increase in food waste landfilled with an increase of 5,000,000 tons compared to the previous year.